Delight in my Truest Til Death Do Us Part Partner

Learning to live and move in deep partnership, in the deepest of love with my truest til death do us part partner delights me.

One of the longings of my heart now that I’ve shifted back into a place where I know that I can move in solitude on the dance floor, is to begin to dance in communion with another or several others.

There is big fear here.

What if I can’t carry my own weight? What if I can’t hold my own in communion with another? What if my dance with another is boring to them? What if I stumble? What then? What if I hurt myself and they feel responsible. The endless list of what ifs.

These are the very same what ifs I had about dancing in solitude with my own body. Interesting, yes?

How do I move out of my dance in habitual solitude, a good dance, into a more outwardly connected dance? Could I let it be okay, completely okay, for it to take however much time it takes to get there? Could I let it happen as it happens, one moment in dance at a time?

Two weeks ago, I had a sweet taste.

We were in the final wind down. I felt a gentle hand moving my way. I chose tentatively to reach up, to touch it, very lightly. The connection began. For a moment, I danced with the hand from my place on the floor, and then I – again tentatively – stood and began to move with the woman to whom the hand belonged, through the fear that felt a little like terror, that I would fall or worse, cause her to fall because my body couldn’t hold the weight or the angle of the move.

How do I communicate that without pushing her away?

I discovered that the body communicated the message easily … subtle adjustment here, a little move towards there. Surprise! No offense. All that was required from me was a trust in the process. A trust in the body’s response. A trust in my partner’s ability to move with the energy between us and to trust her body’s response. A release of the what if, a surrender into the wholeness in the moment. There is no next moment, there is only this one.

Elation and deep appreciation for the infinity contained in 5 minutes of movement with this beautiful Being, for her moving into this tenuous space with me for first time since 2009 and 3 back surgeries.

The barriers I have erected are slowly coming down. Nothing to do but allow the next partner opportunity to make itself known and flow into it, while always dancing with the partner that moves with me until death do us part.

You see it really isn’t about anybody else letting the fear as I move back into this level of movement be okay; it’s about me being good with it. Not just okay with it. Good with it.

It is about me choosing to move into the next edge. That’s what the dance has always offered me: the choice to move through to the edge of the comfort zone and the next. No story about how it “should” be different, how I shouldn’t be fearful when fearful front and center for me in dancing with another.

I recognize also that this practice offers me the choice of how I move. Do I push the body into what it lets me know it’s not ready for? I’ve done that in my life. A lot. It feels (and is) brutal. Will I continue to brutalize my partner?

Perhaps instead, I can choose to allow the movement to extend gently, organically into the next edge. Meet the next external partner as they arrive. No forcing it. Simple allowing as opportunity shows up.

For me it’s a little like meeting pleasure and pain. I have become skilled at that over the past 6 years.

Sometimes, as I move on the floor, I feel constricted pain.The automatic impulse is to constrict even more around it and stop. Yet just below that automatic impulse is an invitation to breathe. I can feel it. That invitation to breathe deeply into the pain and see where it takes me. Could I create a tiny expansion, and then another and another while still standing?

Could I find the pleasure hidden right below the pain and be okay if that pleasure is not ready to surface?

Or does the body in that moment prefer to sink to the floor and explore from there? It has the final say here. No push. Simply an opportunity to be fully with what is showing up with the weight of body on floor.

How do I know when to push just enough to give the resistance a nudge and when to let it be? The body tells me. When I listen, without coercing body into anything other than what it is, sometimes it will surprise me with the most fluid, easy unforced feet off the floor movement and I find myself on the other side of the room, no thought.

The body loves for me to get out of the way and let it take the lead, let it do what bodies love to do move.

Learning to live and move in deep partnership, in the deepest of love with my truest til death do us part partner!